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WcsMap - Implement a FITS-WCS sky projection

Description:
This class is used to represent sky coordinate projections as described in the FITS world coordinate system (FITS-WCS) paper II "Representations of Celestial Coordinates in FITS" by M. Calabretta and E.W. Griesen. This paper defines a set of functions, or sky projections, which transform longitude-latitude pairs representing spherical celestial coordinates into corresponding pairs of Cartesian coordinates (and vice versa).

A WcsMap is a specialised form of Mapping which implements these sky projections and applies them to a specified pair of coordinates. All the projections in the FITS-WCS paper are supported, plus the now deprecated "TAN with polynomial correction terms" projection which is refered to here by the code "TPN". Using the FITS-WCS terminology, the transformation is between "native spherical" and "projection plane" coordinates (also called "intermediate world coordinates". These coordinates may, optionally, be embedded in a space with more than two dimensions, the remaining coordinates being copied unchanged. Note, however, that for consistency with other AST facilities, a WcsMap handles coordinates that represent angles in radians (rather than the degrees used by FITS-WCS).

The type of FITS-WCS projection to be used and the coordinates (axes) to which it applies are specified when a WcsMap is first created. The projection type may subsequently be determined using the WcsType attribute and the coordinates on which it acts may be determined using the WcsAxis(lonlat) attribute.

Each WcsMap also allows up to 100 "projection parameters" to be associated with each axis. These specify the precise form of the projection, and are accessed using PVi_m attribute, where "i" is the integer axis index (starting at 1), and m is an integer "parameter index" in the range 0 to 99. The number of projection parameters required by each projection, and their meanings, are dependent upon the projection type (most projections either do not use any projection parameters, or use parameters 1 and 2 associated with the latitude axis). Before creating a WcsMap you should consult the FITS-WCS paper for details of which projection parameters are required, and which have defaults. When creating the WcsMap, you must explicitly set values for all those required projection parameters which do not have defaults defined in this paper.

Constructor Function:
astWcsMap
Inheritance
The WcsMap class inherits from the Mapping class.
Attributes
In addition to those attributes common to all Mappings, every WcsMap also has the following attributes:

  • NatLat: Native latitude of the reference point of a FITS-WCS projection

  • NatLon: Native longitude of the reference point of a FITS-WCS projection

  • PVi_m: FITS-WCS projection parameters

  • PVMax: Maximum number of FITS-WCS projection parameters

  • WcsAxis(lonlat): FITS-WCS projection axes

  • WcsType: FITS-WCS projection type
Functions
The WcsMap class does not define any new functions beyond those which are applicable to all Mappings.


next up previous 264
Next: WinMap - Map one window on to another by scaling and shifting each axis
Up: AST Class Descriptions
Previous: UnitMap - Unit (null) Mapping

AST A Library for Handling World Coordinate Systems in Astronomy
Starlink User Note 211
R.F. Warren-Smith & D.S. Berry
24th May 2011
E-mail:ussc@star.rl.ac.uk

Copyright (C) 2009 Science \& Technology Facilities Council